Posts with tag treeform

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them, brought to you by David Bowers and Dan O'Halloran.

This it the last in a series of features talking about How To Group With A Druid. I've already covered bear tanks, cat druids and Moonkin. Today, I will be exploring what Restoration druids bring to a 5 man group as well as what they don't do. If you feel I've left out any important points, be sure to leave a comment below! We love comments like healers love aggro control.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM A RESTORATION DRUID

HEALING: Druids are built to be solid healers in both regular and heroic 5 man instances. They don't have to drop 40+ talent points to be good at it. Don't be surprised if you're druid healer is actually specced 31 points in Balance and 30 points in Restoration. That's more than enough for them to get you through alive.

On the other hand, don't be screaming for healing non-stop if you are not the main tank. It's your job to control your aggro, not the healers job to blow half his mana on non-tanks. I understand mistakes happen, wandering mobs appear out of nowhere, the MT gets overwhelmed and loses control of an add or two. But if the healer is dumping more healing on you than the MT for every encounter, you need to scale back your dps or talk to your tank about their taunt tactics.

We've all seen the videos of different dances. We've had ones where they all dance together, ones where the original source is cited. We've even seen video of a guy dancing like a Night Elf Female. Now we have another dance movie. There's one thing about this one that sets it apart, however. This is the first one I've seen that does a really good job of putting the dances side-by-side with their inspirations.



As Bowzerblack on the WoW LJ said: "I didn't know that about ogres!" All I can say is that I didn't either. And yes, I know it's the Boomkin dance too, but you don't see a lot of (completely-bare) topless Boomkins running about. Which, now that I think about it, is probably a good thing.

Previously, on MovieWatch...

[via the WoW LJ community]

OK, well maybe there's not exactly that many issues, but there's quite a few floating around with the new patch today. No Arena masters, for one. Here's a few more I've heard about so far.

• Druids are just plain confused. The patch notes had tons of changes for them, but it looks like only two showed up in the actual patch, the Omen of Clarity buff and Swiftmend. What's up with that? The devs are saying the patch notes are wrong, and there's no word about whether an update will change things later. A lot of druids are confused about it, and rightfully so-- why put stuff in the patch notes that doesn't get implemented?
• There's crazy addon issues, for sure. None of my addons worked at all (they didn't just say "out of date", they actually said "incompatible"), and for a lot of major addons there's no word yet when an update is forthcoming. We knew this would happen, but it still sucks, especially for guilds like mine who plan to raid tomorrow.
• The LFG interface is cool, but there's a few kinks in it, most notably that I couldn't seem to join a group for lower level instances on my 60. If I have a quest in Sunken Temple or Maraudon, why can't I find a group for it? Also, it appears (confirmation on this?) that the raids aren't in the LFG interface either.
• The stealth animations were speed increased (walking speed in stealth), but frankly it looks like characters are "doing the pee pee dance"-- they're jerky and wrong. Petition has been started on the rogue forums to fix them.
• Appears that because of the changes to thrown items (they don't stack-- instead they lose durability when used), equipped thrown items have disappeared forever.
• Finally, this isn't Blizzard's fault, but the battleground servers are being obliterated right now with all the people jumping in to try out their new specs. I was in Arathi Basin 167, and it lasted for all of three minutes before it froze up, flipped over, and died on the spot.

On the flip side, there is a lot of good coming out of the patch: Pallys are thrilled, and while Druids are a little unhappy, they do like that treeform. I've already seen a few Shamans walking around dual wielding (I had to stay Resto, unfortunately, so no DW for me until the expansion). Warriors, from what I've heard, are happier than they thought they would be with rage normalization (their new talents helped a bit). Priests have some new tricks up their sleeve, as do Hunters. Locks still own. And it seems true that no matter what this patch does, it will definitely breathe some new life into a game that a lot of people were getting bored of. There may be 201 problems, but players not playing tonight ain't one.

The realms should be coming back online soon, if not already, and the everything is changing throughout the world.... of Warcraft. 2.0.1 is upon us! Duel wielding Shamans! Talking trees! Water elementals! Normalized rage! Arena PVP! LFG summoning! It's almost too much to take.

The official site is down at the moment-- no telling what it dropped. Complete patch notes are after the jump. Have fun.

Update: Maintenance extended until 5pm PST. Can't... wait....